CMS Rolls Back ‘Health Equity’ Mandates in Cancer Treatment Payment Model

It’s another win for fairness in medicine.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is rolling back its requirements for participants in a Medicaid payment program known as the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM), according to the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC).

The EOM is a payment model for clinicians caring for Medicare patients with certain common cancer types; it provides practices with a monthly payment per patient.

However, pursuant to the Biden administration’s “health equity” executive order, practices would be required to submit health equity plans in order to participate in the EOM.

That requirement has now been rolled back, according to the AJMC. Instead, CMS has sent revised agreements to EOM practices stating that health equity plans are no longer mandatory.

“CMS will not require or accept submissions of health equity plans in EOM for 2025 and beyond, which was a previous requirement for the program,” Lalan Wilfong, MD, senior vice president for value-based care at Thyme Care, told the AJMC.

CMS made this change “to comply with Executive Order 14151 and Executive Order 14168, effective January 20, 2025,” Wilfong told the AJMC, in this context referencing one of President Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI in the federal government.

This is a much-welcome change; it’s deeply disturbing to require practices to swear fealty to the DEI ideology before funding their efforts to treat cancer patients.

It’s also a welcome sign that CMS is unwinding the toxic DEI agenda that CMS had promoted under the prior administration.

For instance, in April 2022, CMS issued a proposed rule for inpatient and long-term hospitals, forcing them to report information on patient race, ethnicity, income, geographic location, sexual orientation, and gender identity. 

This information could then be used to financially reward or punish healthcare providers based on their adherence to identity politics. Do No Harm urged the public to comment on the rule in July 2022, and submitted comments later that month raising the alarm about the rule’s potential for abuse.

In 2023, CMS proposed two rules that would modify quality reporting programs for skilled nursing facilities and cancer hospitals, respectively. These reporting programs use payment incentives and payment reductions to ensure facilities are providing adequate care.

However, the modifications instead promote the concept of “health equity” once again by including a health equity scoring system in the quality reporting guidelines. This encourages providers to promote health equity, which in practice is essentially racial discrimination. The finalized version of the rules went into effect later in 2023.

Do No Harm applauds this recent CMS action, and welcomes future efforts to roll back the “health equity” agenda.